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I'm a wife, so I do a lot of reminding. My husband insists on calling it nagging, but I know other wives out there understand that I'm just using gentle reminders to make sure that my very busy spouse doesn't forget important things.
As tax-filing season winds down -- can you believe we're now through one quarter of 2011? -- I want to expand my reminder range to all you great tax blog readers.
It you get Bankrate's tax newsletter, you've noticed that this week has focused on tax-related retirement accounts. Advice over the last few days has included how to deduct contributions to a traditional IRA, the rules for opening or putting money into a Roth IRA and how you can tap an IRA without paying the Internal Revenue Service penalty.
So here's my IRA nag reminder: You have until the filing deadline, which is April18 this year, to contribute to an IRA, either kind, and have that contribution count toward the 2010 tax year.
That's important for a traditional IRA contribution that you plan to deduct on the 2010 tax return you'll file here in the next few weeks.
And while you don't get to deduct your Roth contribution, by having the money applied to the 2010 tax year, you get to count contributions made the rest of 2011 to this current tax year. That means you're maximizing your IRA contributions and building your nest egg that much more.
So if you haven't maxed out your 2010 IRA contribution, think about doing so by April 18.
And one more tax task to put on your calendar: Join Bankrate's tax adviser George Saenz and me on Tuesday, April 5 at 2 p.m. Eastern time for a live tax chat.
We'll be discussing more last-minute tax filing and tax saving tips. We'd love to hear your questions and your own suggestions on ways to make it successfully to the end of this filing season. Please join us!
Did you miss this week's tax advice on IRAs (and more)? Don't miss another tax tip! Subscribe to Bankrate's free Daily Tax Tip newsletter.
You also can follow me on Twitter @taxtweet.
